Reid glared, but couldn’t completely fault Murphy. She had a point, there was zero evidence that Stephanie’s daughter had been the victim of anything more than a lapse in babysitting on her great-aunt’s part. And she was also right that he was there strictly as Stephanie’s friend, not as a cop.
Speaking of which…he should probably be going. Crisis over. Time to get on with his day off.
He scratched at the low-grade itch between his shoulder blades and nodded curtly when Murphy excused herself. He glanced into the living room, feeling as though his eyes were being forced there by a magnetic pull. Mother and daughter were wrapped around each other on the couch, and it tugged at his heart to see Steph’s soft red curls clutched in the little girl’s fist. The kid was awake and seemed content to snuggle in her mother’s lap.
Reid couldn’t blame her. And boy, did he need to get out of here.
He didn’t do the kid thing. He did the casual thing.
But the bad feeling he just couldn’t shake compelled him to ask Stephanie, “Are you sure she won’t answer a few simple questions, even if you ask them?” It seemed to him that three and a half was plenty old enough for some gentle interrogation, even if Officer Don’t-Make-My-Day-Longer-You-Schmuck Murphy thought there was no reason for it.
But Stephanie shook her head. “Jilly’s a little shy. She doesn’t talk much. We’re working on it.” She dropped a kiss on her daughter’s dark hair, and Reid found himself wondering about the little girl’s father.
Again, he thought of paintings. He hadn’t been to the MFA in fifteen years and hadn’t painted in longer, but Stephanie Alberts made him think of art. So did her daughter. While Stephanie could have been the model for Botticelli’s misty, ethereal Birth of Venus—before Venus got fat—her daughter had stepped straight out of the Spanish works of the next century. She was a study in sharp angles and warm, dark eyes.
“What about her father?” He hadn’t meant to ask, but once the question was out there, Reid consoled himself with the thought that it was a logical next step. More often than not, kids were snatched by family members.
“Luis? What about him?”
“Would he take her?”
Stephanie clutched her daughter until the child squirmed a protest. “She wasn’t taken. She wasn’t. She just wandered off.” But Reid could see the doubts in her big blue-green eyes. Or were those his doubts? “And besides, Luis is…Luis couldn’t have taken her.”
“Detective? The others are leaving now.” At Maureen’s gesture, Reid joined her at the front door. They bade goodbye to the last of the Patriot District cops.
When he was alone with the older woman, Reid said, “Stephanie’s daughter doesn’t talk at all?”
Though they hadn’t kept in touch, he and Maureen had become friends of a sort while they had both watched over Stephanie’s bed at the hospital. The older woman nodded. “That’s right. We keep hoping she’ll start speaking again, but…” She shrugged. “Not yet.”
Reid glanced back toward the living room. “It would help if she could tell us what happened today.”
Maureen’s gray eyes sharpened. “You don’t think she just wandered?”
He shrugged. “There’s nothing to say any different. I just like to be thorough, that’s all.” Not wanting to dwell on his unfounded suspicions, Reid changed the subject. “Have you taken her to any specialists? Do you know why she’s…quiet?”
He didn’t really want to know about the kid, he assured himself. He didn’t do kids. He was just gathering all the information he could. Then he’d be on his way home.
“Her father left when she was about a year old,” Maureen supplied after a quick glance into the other room. “It was…messy. Jilly had just begun talking, but shut down after that. The doctors said not to worry, she’d sing when she was ready. She’d just started to come out of her shell last fall…”
She trailed off and Reid nodded. “And then Steph was attacked.”
“Yes. We didn’t tell Jilly what had happened, of course, but children know things. She’s been extremely shy ever since. Steph has been talking recently about more therapy, but Jilly hated it so much before that we’re afraid of making things worse.” Maureen shrugged. “And then this…? I don’t know what happens now.”
Reid touched Maureen’s shoulder. “She’s home. That’s what matters, right? Leave the rest of it to the police—it’s our job.”
Like it had been their job to arrest small-time drug dealer Alfonse Martinez six months ago, never dreaming that the ensuing firefight would take the life of a three-year-old girl who wasn’t supposed to be in the house in the first place. A little girl who looked an awful lot like Stephanie’s daughter.
He really needed to get out of here.
Reid touched Maureen’s shoulder again, then took himself back into the living room to say goodbye, standing far away from the pretty, domestic scene on the couch. If his own father hadn’t been enough to convince Reid that cops have no business around small children, the memory of that little girl curled around a blood-soaked rag doll had driven the point home.
There was no way to mix a badge with family.
And since Stephanie was a mother and Reid was a cop…well, he was just lucky she’d turned him down last year when he’d let lust overrun his good sense and asked her out. Twice.
Lucky. Yeah, that was it.
She lifted her head from her daughter’s hair and gave him a watery smile. The kid had dropped off to sleep with one thumb in her mouth and her other hand clutching her mother’s hair. Steph stood, balancing the little girl easily on one hip. “Follow me up? I want to put her down for a nap, then maybe you’ll join me in a cup of coffee.”
Reid felt a tightness in his chest, a strange tug of war. Then he took a step away and held up an impersonal hand. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m going to take off. Everything seems okay here.”
“Oh.” The warmth in her jade-green eyes faded a little, the corners of her wide, generous mouth turned down at the edges, and the misty radiance around her dimmed a bit. “I’m sorry, I thought… never mind.” Her mouth turned up again and she held out her free hand to him. “Then thank you so much for all your help. I’m sorry to have interrupted your day off.”
He took her hand and felt as though he ought to kiss it. Suckle her fingers one by one.
Hit himself over the head with a brick until sanity returned.
He gave the dainty hand a brisk shake instead. “That’s my job, Miss Alberts. I’m just glad your daughter is back safe and sound. I…I guess I’ll see you around.” And he escaped out onto the cobbled street with barely a goodbye for Maureen.
Once he was outside and felt that he could fill his lungs for the first time in hours, Reid sucked in a deep breath and took a casual look around the neighborhood while he waited for his heartbeat to return to normal.
He thought about the free weights back at his place near the Chinatown station house. Thought about the frozen pizza he’d planned for his dinner, and about the Red Sox game that was scheduled to start in an hour. Thought about She Devil, the enormously pregnant stray cat that had adopted him a few weeks ago and just that morning had started building a nest in his underwear drawer.
He thought about his day off.
And